January 31, 2013 · Posted in Economy · Comments Off on Free Mobile Services During Chinese New Year 2013

Assuming the three local telecommunication service providers in Singapore have equal share of customers or subscribers, two-third of them will have something to rejoice about for the upcoming Chinese New Year.

SingTel has announced yesterday that it will offer three days of free incoming and outgoing local calls and SMS for all its postpaid customers between Feb 10 and Feb 12. It will also offer a range of free mio TV on-demand movies and channel previews, as well as the chance to win movie tickets, cash prizes and hampers.

After the 60-hour network outage that cut 3G services two weeks ago, M1 has offered compensation to all postpaid customers three days of free local mobile calls, SMS, MMS and data services during the Lunar New Year period. Prepaid customers will enjoy a S$1 bonus for every top-up of S$17 and above, during the month of February 2013.

So far, Starhub has not yet announced anything with regards to mobile services, but it did briefly mentioned that all its Starhub TV customers can enjoy free viewing on all Asian channels from 8 Feb, 12pm to 13 Feb, 12pm.

Essentially, we have some great freebies coming up next week! Will keep you people posted…

Since yesterday morning at 3am, MobileOne (M1) network was down with several users impacted by the network failure. Several M1 subscribers were unable to use the data network, and the company also advised users to switch to 2G network.

However, for some other users, there was completely no service, including phone calls or SMS. The downtime was almost close to 24 hours; and probably most badly hit in the history of Singapore’s Telecommunication service.

This morning, when I tried accessing M1 network at around 8am, it seems to be back in order. There were also suggestion that some customers lost several thousand of dollars in business, due to loss of network. This is considered to be very disruptive; hopefully it won’t happen again.

March 24, 2012 · Posted in Economy · Comments Off on Hush Puppies Sales – Up to 80% Off

Hush Puppies is having a warehouse sales at 12 Harper Road, Singapore. Up to 80% off from High Street prices can be found here.

The sales is open to public and operates daily from 9am to 7pm. This promotion will end on 25th March 2012.

I got to know of this promotion through an SMS sent by DBS. If you are a DBS or POSB credit/debit card holder, it adds a further 5% discount off the final price.

Apart from shoes and socks, there are also other accessories, such as sling bags, laptop bags, shirts, shorts, pants, etc. Therefore, don’t miss out this great offer and get yourself something – whilst stock last.

I tried accessing Mobile One (M1) website earlier today and found that the website was under maintenance. This is just strange, because at the same time, I tried calling in to M1 Customer Service Hotline at 1627 (or 1622 for corporate), the line is completely engaged. No Tele representative is picking up the phone.

From Telemarketing perspective, I could draw a few conclusions. Firstly, today’s volume is hitting the peak due to system glitches and issues, whereby customers are all trying to call in to inquire more information. Secondly, the system issue has caused the telephony network to malfunction, in a way such that the calls are not routed to any Tele representative. Or otherwise, the Tele team are not performing to the required Service Level Agreement (SLA). I had even left my number for them to call back, but so far M1 has not reached out to me even after a few hours.

Although I do notice that M1 network coverage has improved for the past 2 weeks, there seems to be an imbalance of service level. It is really disappointing that I was not able to reach to any Customer Service representative, despite that I am subscribed to a corporate plan.

The former minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, former Labour Chief and former People’s Action Party (PAP) chairman, Lim Boon Heng, has quoted in the news that in order for the quality of service to improve, fare increment is necessary.

… If operators do not make profits, they cannot invest in new buses, leading to a drop in quality of service…

said, Mr Lim. In addition,

… If fares are not raised, it will impact transport workers as they will not be able to get wage increases…

From a dominant political party (PAP) background, it is inevitable that the mindset is to increase costs to justify the quality of service, like the way people are taxed to pay the million-dollar salary of the ministers

I don’t think our transportation company is running a loss. Mr Lim even quoted that the SMRT posted a net earning of $161.1 million for the year ended in March 2011. That is one-sixth of a billion dollars.

Rightfully, I may agree with Mr Lim’s thought that the increase of fare is justified with the improvement in quality. Unfortunately, the train is still as crowded as before during the morning crowd, following fare hikes throughout the years. This has to be addressed.